Have you ever wondered how many carbs are in a serving of whiskey? Have you ever wondered what distillers consider to be a serving of whiskey? You may soon find out:
Pressure is mounting worldwide for alcoholic beverage producers to modify labels to make the health and nutritional information more clear to consumers. From Australia (above) to America, it’s a hot button issue that will impact alcoholic beverage brands worldwide this year.
A proposal to include nutritional information on the labels of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. is currently being considered by a federal agency, but alcohol producers are mixed in their support of such a measure.
USA Today notes that the Distilled Spirits Council, which is beginning to see sales rebound from recessionary lows, supports the measure to list information such as calories, carbohydrates, serving size and alcohol per serving on labels.
Naturally, the Distilled Spirits Council will like this, as calorically booze < wine < beer.
Nutritional information for alcohol? Surely they jest. What else do we need to know after the proof and quantity? LOL
If you’re too intoxicated to pronounce “riboflavin” without slurring, you should stop drinking immediately.
I always wondered why alcoholic beverages were exempt from the labeling regulations. Not that I give a fuck about that bullshit in the first place, it just seemed odd.
I think kids would’ve stopped drinking Four Loko if they’d known how many calories were in it.
This is fair. Want to diet? Do shots of Jack!
Bert Grant of the late lamented Grant’s Ale put nutiritional information on their six-packs for a little while to show that good beer is actually quite nutritious. They were told to stop by the BATF because it could have caused some people to think that beer was food.
Good!!
I about had a heart attack last summer when I found out how many calories Tim’s Hard Lemonade has in it – and the Extra Hard is, duh, EXTRA FATTENING!! Like, 400+ calories per can!!!!
Alcohol, tobacco and firearms – and soon MJ – are all regulated by a different agency than the FDA. BAT.
Please be advised.
Best drink is the 6 pct alcohol in Kokanee. Although a double brown ale is nice too. The non-export version.
They should just put a notice on every bottle/can: “If you don’t already know this shit is bad for you, perhaps you should have another round.”
“Each shot contains: 15% chance of shame, 10% increased likelihood of contracting syphillis.”
Of course big producers are behind this. This would be BRUTAL on small brewers, vinters, and distillers.
I’m in favor of this, assuming it can be kept from becoming, as @12 mentions, an undue burden on small brewers. The assumption that if you’re drinking, you clearly don’t care at all about how healthy the things you ingest are seems more than a little puritanical to me.
In terms of calories & carbs, beer/wine/booze is waaaaay healthier than, say, just about anything you can order from a fast food chain restaurant.
@12 how? you can get calories just from separating the alcohol and burning it in a simple distillation test – which most craft brewers already do to check lot quality.
They sell sample kits for the main measures – most high school science labs have em – they’re not that expensive.
Good!! It’s just weird that everything needs nutritional information except alcohol. Next stop is the meat department.
@12
That’s an idiotic theory.
No, most brewers do not currently put their product in a calorimeter to test quality currently.
And that process, which they don’t actually currently do, costs money, which most small business aren’t swimming in.
I too have wondered why booze was exempt from nutrition information on their packaging. I should have asked people at the FDA when my mother worked there but I was too young to care about those things then after I started to wonder I had lost contact with many of them.
Thank god! Now I can regulate my eating disorder via my alcohol abuse.
@18:
I always assumed it was because some Puritanical eejits decided that if adults ever cottoned to the fact that alcoholic beverages had any sort of nutritional content and value, they might, oh I don’t know, start swilling it at every meal, just like normal food.
@18, 20: More likely it’s because, as someone else pointed out, booze is regulated by the BATF, not the FDA. What the fuck alcohol, tobacco, and firearms have to do with each other that they need to be under the same bureau, I’ve never understood.